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Jonathan Safran-Foer: “Eat a ton less meat”
I’ve developed quite a healthy respect for Jonathan Safran-Foer. I’ve never read any of his novels, but from what I gather, he’s a critically respected writer who could probably carve out a profitable niche churning out books in the vein of Franzen and other contemporary “literary” novelists. So it must have been somewhat risky, career-wise,…
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Meanwhile…
…take all those proud feelings about the United States standing up for freedom and human rights in Libya and turn them inside out, and vomit into them. That’s Bahrain. More here. Sigh.
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The next war
Well, it looks like we’re going for a hat trick–three wars at once! Qaddafi’s a monster, of course, but this is intervention into another nation’s civil war. And if the no-fly zone and “no-drive zone” don’t work (and given historical precedent, that’s not at all unlikely), the pressure for further escalation will be immense. I…
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Whither the liberal-libertarian alliance?
Here’s an interesting post from the new(ish) blog Bleeding-Heart Libertarians: Here are some policy areas where classical liberals or libertarians seem to have a lot of common ground with those on the political left: • Immigration – Immigration is a net benefit to the receiving country and a matter of justice to would-be migrants. We…
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On ecumenism and the unity of the church
There’s a bit of hubbub in the theo-blogosphere about ecumenism and the unity of the church (e.g., at Inhabitatio Dei and An und fur sich). I haven’t given this a ton of thought because I think ecclesiology is boring, but, for what it’s worth, I see the unity of the church as having two aspects.…
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Animals and inconsistency
Here’s an excellent post from Mark Bittman discussing an issue that I’m guessing is not widely understood. I think a lot of people probably think that there are fairly stringent rules about how farm animals can be treated; but as Bittman notes, clauses in virtually all anti-cruelty laws have what are called “common farming exceptions,”…
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Japan
Natural disasters are the kinds of events where bloggers, unless they’re on the scene, can’t add much value to the coverage from quality news sources. But I wanted to at least make note of the ongoing events in Japan and encourage folks to pray if they’re the praying sort and give if they can afford…
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Making Sense of Evolution: God of the future
John Haught concludes Making Sense of Evolution with some reflections on how an evolutionary picture of the world should inform–and even transform–our view of God. As we’ve seen, Haught thinks that evolutionary science reveals a creation that is unfinished and in process, analogous to an unfolding drama rather than a perfectly engineered machine. And how…
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Missouri tea party hates puppies
For years, Missouri earned the dubious distinction as the nation’s “puppy mill capital” because its lax humane regulations and enforcement allowed dog breeders to raise puppies at low costs in terrible, overcrowded conditions. Last fall, Missouri voters approved a referendum to finally solve this problem — the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act — which mandates…
